Why I live at the P.O. was written by Eudora Welty in 1941. Sister, the first person narrator, who is a flat character in the story, causes external conflicts within her family as a result of her inner-conflicts. Such as lack of self-confidence and a demanding need to be the center of attention. Due to the conflicts she deals with inside herself, she is driven to move out of her family’s home and into the post office. In the beginning of the story the reader has sympathy for Sister due to the conflicts that are going on, but later on in the story we start to see that these conflicts were perpetuated by Sister herself. As this occurs the story takes on a comedic aspect from the view of the reader, and we lose our sympathy for Sister. Sister lives in China Grove, Mississippi presumably a very small town with only a few occupants. She lives with her mother, grandfather and uncle in their home, being the center of attention for the duration of the time until her younger sister, Stella-Rondo returns home. The return of Stella-Rondo sparks a conflict with Sister immediately because Sister is obviously envious of her and has been even before she came back to China Grove. The reader gets clear evidence of Sister’s jealousy toward Stella-Rondo when Sister says “She’s always had anything in the world she wanted and then she’d throw it away.”(594). Clearly Sister has a predisposition toward Stella-Rondo returning for many reasons, and this is the beginning of the conflict that she begins to have with herself. Stella-Rondo returns to the house with a child during the middle of dinner, and Sister is feeling greatly offended by this and shows us her arrogance and dismay that she’s losing the center of attention when she says “There I was o... ... middle of paper ... ...ly marking the time, in hopes that a member of her family will come to the post office and beg for her return as she states in, “And if Stella-Rondo should come to me this minute, on bended knees, and attempt to explain the incidents of her life…I’d simply put my fingers in both my ears and refuse to listen.”(602). It is clear to the reader that Sister is hoping that Stella-Rondo will come for her in hopes giving her the attention she is longing for. Throughout the story, it has been Sister who has tried to persuade the reader to take her side in the debacle with her family. The truth is that it was Sister who caused the entire dispute that is going on with her obsession to compete with her sister that goes back to her childhood where she feels that Stella-Rondo is spoiled and continues to be spoiled up to the end following Sister’s desperate need for attention.
Sterling’s sister Theo was came to their house for a visit, and he was happy to see her. However, she stayed in Sterling’s bedroom and was not happy when the raccoon came in to sleep in his bed in the room at night. She was also annoyed because Sterling had a half-finished canoe in his living room. Theo wanted them to hire a house
The ability to write in a lineal matter allows the younger sister to repeatedly state her wants, while simultaneously ignoring the protagonist’s advice. Throughout the narration it can be seen how the younger sister Yuchin blatantly ignores her sister’s claims and proceeds to merely report and excuse the status and needs of her car acquisition. Yuchin consistently address her sister in an inflexible unilateral manner “Elder sister since you refused to help me, I decided to act on my own. At any rate, I must have a car….” (591) Or “Got it. Have a nice dream, sister!” (592).
They want their sister to lay in the road and get hit by a car so that the mom feels bad for leaving them out in the cold all day long. They soon convince their youngest sibling, Tiffany, to be the decoy. They say that, “she will do anything, as long as you call her ‘Tiff’” (Sedaris). She was laying in the street when a car comes and stops in front of her and asks if there is a child in the road. Tiffany then moves out of the way and the mother comes trenching down the sidewalk in the snow. Sedaris says that he wants, “To kick her out of nature just as she had kicked us out of the house” (Sedaris). This shows that she had drawn a line where they couldn’t be so they wanted to reenforce the line and say that she couldn’t be on their territory. Sedaris and his siblings were reluctant to be able to go inside and they said that it was hard to say no to someone that looked so
Everyone wants a perfect family, but nothing is ever perfect. The family in “Why I Live at the P.O.” is most definitely less than perfect. When Stella-Rondo returns to her old home after leaving her husband and bringing her small child who she claims is adopted, much conflict in the family increases. Stella-Rondo turns every family member living in the household against Sister, her older sister, and every family member betrays Sister by believing the lies Stella-Rondo tells about Sister to them. Through much turmoil and distress, Sister becomes so overwhelmed with the unending conflict that she feels she must leave her home and live at the post office. In “Why I Live at the P.O.,” Eudora Welty strongly implies that the function of the family can rapidly decline when family members refuse to do certain things they should and do certain things they should not through her use of point of view, symbolism, and setting.
Sister’s perspective is very self-centered and designed to manipulate the reader for selfish purposes. When the story first begins, Sister is trying to get the reader to see that “Of course [she] went with Mr., Whitaker first…and Stella Rondo broke [them up].” Sister wants the readers to know this piece of information so we will think she is a victim in the story. This is a way of getting us, the readers, on “her side” so we will begin to think like her and dislike the person or people that she dislikes.
Her identity of a wife and mother is stifled through the work of her husband and sister in law. Both John and his sister Jennie, do not want her to think about her condition, however that is the only thing she is able to think about. She had given birth to her baby a short time before moving into the house with the yellow wallpaper. Perhaps she suffered from postpartum depression, however not much was known about this during these times. If she had gotten proper treatment for her depression, maybe she would have overcome her illness. Instead, she was essentially locked away in a room and told to rest. She strives to form her own identity that has been lost due to her illness. Ultimately the narrator loses her whole identity to the wallpaper. She transforms from the depression filled wife and mother to one of the women creeping behind the wallpaper. The narrator destroys the wallpaper in an effort to escape the hold her husband has over her. In the end she loses her identity along with her
This story describes main character’s uneventful life in China Grove is interrupted by the arrival of her sister, Stella-Rondo, who has just left her husband and returned to the family home in Mississippi. Because Stella-Rondo destroyed her sister’s uneventful life and broke her relationships with everyone in this family, her sister who is speaker in this story had to move to the post office for living. Eudora Welty’s ‘Why I Live at the P.O’ makes use of symbolism as a mechanism of communicating the many themes that surround it. Welty’s story incorporates the radio and the post office as important symbols that enable the author to tie together and give meaning to the narrative presented. The radio is used to symbolize the increase in isolation. It presented the only way through which the family could be able to gain any form of knowledge or the outside world since they did not want to go back to the Post Office again. When Sister leaves with the radio, she goes away with the one form of equipment that could be used to link the family to the general world. With the radio gone, the family is thrown in further isolation. The post office is also symbol of isolation. It epitomizes the isolation faced by Sister as she vows not to go back to her family home. She vows to stay in the post office until her sister or family could come and seek to establish relationship with her. Through her words “Here I am, and here I stay” (Rubenstein & Larson 941) Sister asserts that she is going to be happy at the post office. The post office also symbolizes isolation in that it enhances the stance that the family took. Through pointing out that they will not send or receive letters anymore, the Sister’s family stamp heir isolation from Sister and the rest of the world. When Sister said that the only way that the family
The incident in the poem that proves how the sisters are clearly different is the way each of them react when they hear the goblin men and the fruit market. Laura is the curious one with the wandering soul and Lizzie is the protective, state minded one. Lizzie was especially looking out for Lauren when she said “Oh”, cried Lizzie, “Laura, Laura, / You should not peep at goblin men” (Rossetti 48-49). But Laura gets sucked in by the goblin men and ends up giving them a lock of her hair for some fruit. After Laura eats the fruit they are put through some stormy weather which puts their relationship to the test. Soon after Laura eats the fruit she begins to waste away. Laura stopped eating and doing her chores all she wanted was some goblin fruit. Lizzie became increasingly concerned “Tender Lizzie could not bear / To watch her sisters cankerous care, / Yet not to share” (299-301). Lizzie became so worried that she decided to go to the market to see what was going on which relates to the statement of how a sister can bring the other back when
Stella Cross is an interesting character in the Novel Alive. She displays several qualities which make her interesting. Stella is eager we witness this when she is about to go back to school after her long wait for her heart transplant. She is also insecure we witness this trait when she refers to her little sister as her replacement and when she talks about how she isn’t the most attractive. Lastly, Stella is curious we witness this when she decides to go after a boy who “literally” makes her heart jump out at him, but later comes to find out that he is the boy who died to give her, her heart and later he tries to kill her.
along, which leads to one sister talking behind another sister’s back, which is ultimately how
Jesus tells his disciples a parable of the Prodigal son. But first, there is this family that has two sons. The youngest son asks his father for his inheritance. The youngest son then took the inheritance and ran away to spend it all. Then he ran into trouble. He ran out of money so he came back home. Instead of being punished he was welcomed with open arms. The older brother was furious. The older brother does everything right and never gets welcomed the way his brother does. This relates a lot to “Why I live at the P.O”. The oldest sister was getting along fine with her family until the youngest sister (Stella Rondo) decided to come back. They were excited to see Stella Rondo; Sister was jealous. Sister wants all the attention not the other way around. Sister then becomes petty and try to turn the family against Stella Rondo but turns out that Stella-Rondo becomes that master of the game. Sister tries to accuse Stella Rondo of lying but the family does not buy it. They do not believe sister but according to sister they believe Stella Rondo and rather take Stella Rondo’s side. Sister accuses her of lying but how do we know that sister is not the one lying. So at the end of the story Stella Rondo has turned everyone in the family against Sister. Sister got tired of all the ridicule and decides to take “what was hers” and leave. Sister then goes to the P.O. (post office) and decides to live
The sister's fights are usually underlined with their desires to make each other into better people. The sisters are connected by their pursuit a better life causing them to push each other towards their goals. When Emily gets herself
How would she be convinced to live in such an atrocious place? It must have been the brute that she married: Stanley. That Polack somehow managed to convince my dear Stella that living in a slum was a brilliant idea! My dear sister must have at least told him what our plantation looked like, so he should know the type of place that she deserves to live in. Yet, since I see that she lives here, that pea-brained man must have concocted a miraculous excuse that managed to convince my dear Stella to live in such a ghetto.
...rd time in her life. She also asked for guidance in helping her sister noticing that they were going through a rough patch. As she was asking for help, her sister was doing the same thing. Asking for help in saving the little of what was left of the relationship she had with her sister.
The Other Sister is about a family with a sibling that has a developmental disability also known as mildly mentally retardation (MMR), mild developmental disability, or mild intellectual disorder (MID). Carla Tate is our main character that has MMR as a disability. She is a young women, twenty-four years old, with a slender but beautiful appearance. Carla has just graduated from a special education boarding school and is returning home to her family. Carla’s mother (Elizabeth Tate) is overbearingly protective, does not appreciate all of the abilities that Carla has acquired. Her father (Bradley Tate) is a recovering alcoholic who is sympathetic and supportive of Carla, who at the same time has to deal with his domineering wife. Carla has two sisters Heather (who happens to be a lesbian) and Caroline (who is planning a wedding). Carla’s sister quickly bond again upon Carla’s return. They are supportive of Carla and her abilities.